Autism and being you

Autistic people hide who they are because their traits are not tolerated by society. It is not our job to hide who we are to make others more comfortable.

Every human hides their real selves as they are trying to fit into the myth of normal that has been projected onto society. Knowing ourselves is a life journey and society is basically teaching everyone no to be themselves. Successfully unmasking for many autistic people means allowing people to see some of their autistic traits that they were previously hiding. Revealing traits I was hiding felt like I could start to let go of many more I was supressing. It was such a relief, because it is so exhausting and harmful to mental health to keep doing it.

Even though I have tried to hide my autisitc traits for many years, I followed my heart for the most part, and that came with many consequences. I was labelled difficult and rebellious to name a few. It has been said to me that my autistic traits have worsened since being diagnosed with autism. I have not become worse but rather I don’t hide many of them anymore. The consequences of not hiding them are not as bad as trying to be non-autistic.

Sometimes we hear autistic people say they fully hide their traits around their families, work colleagues and friends. This isn’t true because it’s not possible to hide our whole autistic selves because being autistic is an expression of our real selves. Many autistic people fear if they show who they are around the people in their lives they will no longer like or accept them. The people around them will have already seen many of their autistic traits and have accepted them without knowing they were autisitc so this may not be the case.

Its not helpful to tell autistic people to be themselves and then say we didn't mean that, in other words don't be autistic. Autistic people are not broken versions of so-called normal people, they are autistic. It's not helpful to tell autistic people to apply strategies, or work in time frames like neurotypicals do to process information and emotions. Autistic people do not deal with these in the same way as non-autistic people do.

I think there's somewhat of a misconception that autistic people who hide their traits do not know who they are. Many do know who they are and only do this for acceptance. When I discovered I was autistic it allowed me to show many of my traits that I had been hiding from others. I no longer cared what others thought because I finally knew why I felt and behaved like I did. revealing out true selves is a path of self-acceptance so revealing who we are aligns us with our true selves.

When autistic people express the issues they are experiencing and are then dismissed with comments like, we all have to deal with that, it fails to see how autistic people do not understand emotions the same, and feel them in intense ways they may not be able to express in words. Most neurotypical behaviour in autistic people is masking thus they are only acting this way for the benefit of non-autistic people.

Autistic people may appear to be doing well when they are experiencing significant difficulties in day to day life. Using labels like high functioning only creates an anxiety in people to be a way that isn't themselves. Many do need more support than they let on. People often don’t let that be known for fear of more judgement, so they pretend to be high functioning or doing well when they aren't, and why their real needs often go under the radar.

I am a level 2 autistic and have never been good at masking, but I did fool myself I was doing a good job of it. The longer we mask the harder it is to come back from, because of the mental health issues it creates. As an autistic elder I can’t express this enough because I don’t want younger autistic people to experience the trauma that comes from decades of masking. Many autistic elders like myself live reclusive lives now because of this, and the reason many of us are still here.

People have trouble believing us when we we start unmasking because we have been fooling them for so long that we are someone we are not. We can be told you’re not the same and have gone down a rabbit hole or you used to be so competent, what happened to you. The irony is we mask to protect ourselves from stigma and harsh judgement and then unmasking sets us up for non-belief, abuse, and more judgement. Masked or unmasked our mental health is going to take a beating from other people. So why unmask? I believe unmasking frees us from the shame, and guilt we have for being autistic.

I’m glad that I’m retired now and don’t have to navigate the outside manic anymore. I live a reclusive lifestyle mostly protected from many of the daily challenges people have in their workplaces, but I know the struggle of this because I encountered it for many decades. I live in my own created bubble with my husband, and hardly ever venture out of my house so I rarely interact with people in person and when I do it's minimal.

As I have aged I lack the ability to cope with my social anxiety and sensory issues more and more. I also don’t have the capacity or energy anymore to hide my autisitc traits. If I become dysregulated or sensory overloaded, I become non-verbal, or garbage comes out of my mouth, so the only way I can leave the house is to self-serve and be non-verbal. Its hard when I attend medical appointments because I feel I have no choice but to speak, and these are the situations that sensory overload and deregulate me the most. I am more at peace when I am mostly non-verbal when out of the home.